Funny Quote

I was watching the film Contagion this week and one of the characters in the film gave this quote.

" A blog is just graffiti with punctuation."

I love this quote so i thought that i would jot it down here.
 

Important Information Regarding The Rights Of Photographer's

Richard sent out this link regarding a recent case in which a 15 year old photographer successfully received compensation  after being hassled by the police when they were taking photographs. Its a land mark case and i have put the link to the story here so that if ever i need to reference this, then i can look back on it.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-16131390

The Hairy Goat Tour Company

I have just found out about this really good idea when visiting London. Hairygoat is a company that organizes tours around London but with you taking photographs. The guides are photographers and they give you advice and help. It sounds like a really good business idea to me and i like what they have done. So i have mentioned them here and posted a link to their website, it might be a fun thing to do if we go to London with uni.
http://hairygoat.net/

Light Meter Reading

 -Reflected Reading
Good for average lighting, black and white. (no invercone)

-Incident Reading
Good for transparency film, contrasty conditions. (invercone)

-Grey card reading
Good for skin tones, landscape.

Sad Tales Of Photographer's

 Today i was researching Tuesday's systems and processes lecture and looked more closely at what we had discussed in the session. Bob Carlos Clarke's name came up along with Brian Duffy's. Further reading up on these photographers reveals sad but engrossing tales of the lives of these people.

Photograph By Bob Carlos Clarke

Feedback

  This week we started getting some feedback from a couple of the units connected to our course. This proved to be very good for me as an individual as it grades our work in the different subjects and helps us to push our abilities more. We were given positive comments and advice on areas in which we needed to improve and on the whole it was a very good experience. I personally have loved this week and cannot wait for more of the same. From this feedback i was given, i have started a new page on my blog based around a 365 day personal photography project. I hope that this will help to push me more and will help slow me down when taking photographs with the outcome of making me compose my shots better and spend more time getting to know my camera.

Wet Feet And Bad Weather

 So this week i have learned to always take sensible shoes with you when out taking photographs. I spotted a couple of good shots that were only achievable by wading into river deep water. Wellies or the equivalent of are needed to go into water and not just your normal shoes. Take a bin liner to sit on (wet river banks wet your trousers). When going out to take windy shot showing leaves blowing to and fro, at least make sure it is windy and not a still fine day. Check sunrise and sunset times as trying to capture images in the dark is not ideal when the suns gone down just before you've gone out. From now on i will take all these factors into consideration especially when trying to capture landscapes.

Morning Bike Ride

 So iv'e just been out this morning and i took my camera out with me as i haven't really had time to play with it yet. I cycled along the canal from Burnley to Nelson and i was lucky because the water was quite still. I was hoping to scout out some nice places for our up and coming landscape brief, but the weather was very overcast and it looked like it was going to rain. Anyhow i managed to bag a couple of shots but not the kind i was hoping to take. They are a good starting point but they just remind me that i need to get out of my comfort zone and push myself more.

Daniel Rozin

 Wow this guy's work is really quite awe inspiring. I will definitely try and get myself over to Manchester to see the Dark Matter exhibition at the Whitworth gallery. This kind of stuff looks right up my street.
http://darkmattersart.com/

Pinhole Camera's

  Had fun today making our pinhole camera's in contextual studies. It was a great lesson and i enjoyed it so much i think because it was hands on.

My new Nikon d7000

 I went out and bought myself a new Nikon D7000 camera. So i have been having a little play around on it this morning taking photographs of my god children.

 I love my new camera so far but i am going to have an extensive play around on it later. Hopefully it will not be to hard to get to grips with and i look forward to using it for our portrait brief in the next couple of days.

So let's try some practice portrait shots then

   So we now have two weeks to do our Portrait shots. So i thought that i would do a couple of test shots and set ups. In the brief it says to use natural lighting if possible, but i wanted to try out some fill in flash shots, as i have never really tried this before. On our "objects" brief we were to try out different types of lighting so i thought i would kill two birds with one stone in these test shots...

 So not too bad but a bit of work still needs to be done. But i really enjoyed using flash.

Quotes that i have found relevant this week

 "There is a vast difference between taking a picture and making a photograph" Robert Heinecken (photographer)
 "Learning composition is like learning a language. Once you've learned a language, it is not something you consciously think about as you talk." David Prakel (from his book Composition)
 "The decisive moment" Henri Cartier Bresson.

Extra reading

 This week i have taken out two books from the library for relation to work set in some of  seminars. They are as follows :-
  Composition by David Prakel.
  And The photograph as contemporary art by Charlotte Cotton.

So the first proper week

 Wow what an eventful week and if anything it has taught me that the old saying "knowledge is power" is most certainly true. We have been set brief's for future lessons and been given lots of references to look up and digest. Also it has taught me that constructive criticism is important for all our work as group as we can all learn from each other. Seeing other students work is refreshing and even inspiring as is most importantly seeing work from the lecturers themselves, and the references i am picking up on are very important to me. So for me personally this week three names have stuck in regard to reference material that i need to go more in depth with and they are :-
Paul Trevor
Jane Bown
Robert Doisneau
  All interested me for different reasons but i have listed these names because all three provoked an emotional response that peaked my interest.

A couple of examples of pre uni work

First time blogger

Just started an fda photography media course at uni in Blackburn.  Loving it so far and i can't wait to see where it takes me..... Very much looking forward to learning new techniques..... so fun times ahead.